18/11/12

            Today was a truly wonderful day. Sad that it will be one of my last ones here, and like this.

            When Julia was here visiting me she jokingly referred to me as the “pied piper” once because anywhere I went at the orphanage, I was followed by a throng of children. This morning I stopped by my host family’s house to pick up the kids for church. All the windows and doors were still shut, so after knocking a few times and not hearing any movement in the house, I went on to church alone. I was a little disappointed because it’s one of the last times I would get to go to mass with them, but I settled into to my usual pew alone and closed my eyes to pray. I felt a movement behind me and peeked back to see a girl from our neighborhood sitting next to me. A few minutes later I opened my eyes again and there were two more girls sitting with us. By the time I finished and sat back my row had six little girls sitting in it, and two more had spilled into the row in front of us. One of the girls was the little one who used to sit on my lap during mass at the beginning of the year when I was feeling incredibly homesick for all my girls back in Inharrime. She’s still just as cute, but now far too large to be sitting on anyone’s lap.

            In the morning Anna and I hung out with a PCV who was visiting from Inhambane province and some of the trainees. Then in the early afternoon some more trainees came over for our weekly cooking—this week’s theme was Mexican. Great food and fun and interesting people.

            I just finished reading “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” which I highly recommend everyone read. This quote on page 336 really spoke to me during this bittersweet transition time: “You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place, like you’ll not only miss the people you love but you’ll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you’ll never be this way ever again.”